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Chapter 2. Deploying Self-Hosted Engine

This chapter describes how to deploy the self-hosted engine on Red Hat Enterprise Linux hosts and the Red Hat Virtualization Host, and how to administer the Manager virtual machine.

Important

See Self-Hosted Engine Recommendations in the Planning and Prerequisites Guide for specific recommendations about the self-hosted engine environment.
If you plan to use bonded interfaces for high availability or VLANs to separate different types of traffic (for example, for storage or management connections), you should configure them before deployment. See Networking Recommendations in the Planning and Prerequisites Guide.
If you want to deploy the self-hosted engine with Red Hat Gluster Storage as part of a Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure (RHHI) environment, see the Deploying Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Guide for more information.

2.1. Initiating Self-Hosted Engine Deployment on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Hosts

2.1.1. Installing the Self-Hosted Engine Packages

Ensure the host is registered and subscribed to the required entitlements. See Subscribing to the Required Entitlements in the Installation Guide for more information.
You can install the self-hosted engine from the command line by using hosted-engine --deploy, or through the Cockpit user interface. Different packages are required depending on the method you choose.

Procedure 2.1. Installing the Self-Hosted Engine

  1. Install the packages required to install the self-hosted engine.
    • To install self-hosted engine using hosted-engine --deploy: 
      # yum install ovirt-hosted-engine-setup
    • To install self-hosted engine using the Cockpit user interface: 
      yum install cockpit-ovirt-dashboard
  2. Optionally install the RHV-M Virtual Appliance package for the Manager virtual machine installation. Alternatively, the script will prompt you to download it during deployment. 
    # yum install rhvm-appliance

2.1.2. Initiating Self-Hosted Engine Deployment

The hosted-engine script or Cockpit user interface is provided to assist with configuring the host, and the Manager virtual machine. Both methods ask you a series of questions, and configures your environment based on your answers.

Note

If using the script, use the hosted-engine --check-deployed command to check whether a self-hosted engine has already been deployed. An error will only be displayed if no self-hosted engine has been deployed. If a self-hosted engine has already been deployed, subsequent deployments will fail. See Chapter 3, Troubleshooting a Self-Hosted Engine Deployment if you need to troubleshoot an existing deployement, or clean up a failed deployment in order to redeploy the self-hosted engine.

Prerequisites

  • You must have a freshly installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 system with the ovirt-hosted-engine-setup or cockpit-ovirt-dashboard package installed.
  • You must have prepared storage for your self-hosted engine environment. At least two storage domains are required:
    • A shared storage domain dedicated to the Manager virtual machine. This domain is created during the self-hosted engine deployment, and must be at least 68 GB.
    • A data storage domain for regular virtual machine data. This domain must be added to the self-hosted engine environment after the deployment is complete.

      Warning

      Red Hat strongly recommends that you have additional active data storage domains available in the same data center as the self-hosted engine environment.
      If you deploy the self-hosted engine in a data center with only one active data storage domain, and if that data storage domain is corrupted, you will be unable to add new data storage domains or to remove the corrupted data storage domain. You will have to redeploy the self-hosted engine.
    For more information on preparing storage for your deployment, see the Storage chapter of the Administration Guide.

    Important

    If you are using iSCSI storage, do not use the same iSCSI target for the shared storage domain and data storage domain.
  • You must have a fully qualified domain name prepared for your Manager and the host. Forward and reverse lookup records must both be set in the DNS.
  • You must have the RHV-M Virtual Appliance for the Manager installation. If you have not manually installed the rhvm-appliance package package, it will be downloaded and installed automatically.
  • To use the RHV-M Virtual Appliance for the Manager installation, one directory must be at least 5 GB. The deployment process will check if /var/tmp has enough space to extract the appliance files. If not, you can specify a different directory or mount external storage. The VDSM user and KVM group must have read, write, and execute permissions on the directory.

Procedure 2.2. Initiating a RHEL-based Self-Hosted Engine Deployment

  • Initiating Hosted Engine Deployment

    The deployment is initiated differently depending whether you are using the hosted-engine --deploy command or Cockpit user interface.
    • To deploy the self-hosted engine using hosted-engine --deploy, it is recommended to use the screen window manager to run the script to avoid losing the session in case of network or terminal disruption. If not already installed, install the screen package, which is available in the standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux repository. 
      # yum install screen
      # screen
      # hosted-engine --deploy

      Note

      To escape the script at any time, use the CTRL+D keyboard combination to abort deployment. In the event of session timeout or connection disruption, run screen -d -r to recover the hosted-engine deployment session.
    • To deploy the self-hosted engine using the Cockpit user interface, log in to the UI at https://HostIPorFQDN:9090 and navigate to Virtualization > Hosted Engine.
      Select Standard to perform a standard self-hosted engine installation, and click Start.
Refer to Section 2.3, “Deploying the Self-Hosted Engine” for information about questions asked during the deployment process, and configuration information.